Grete Keilson

Margarete "Grete" Fuchs-Keilson (21 December 1905 – 4 January 1999) was a German politician and official in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).

Biography Margarete Schnate was born in Berlin on 21 December 1905, the daughter of a labourer. She attended Volksschule (elementary school) and Handelsschule (trade school) there. She joined the Young Communist League of Germany (KJD) in 1922, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1925.

After Dimitrov was arrested on 9 March 1933 for alleged complicity in starting the Reichstag fire, for which he was later acquitted, Keilson used forged documents herself to flee to Copenhagen. She then relocated to Paris, where she worked for the Congress against Fascism and War under the codename Agnes. While there, she met the physicist Klaus Fuchs, whom she helped to escape to Britain. She then worked for the Central Committee of the KPD, coordinating KPD cells operating outside Germany under the code names Agnes, first in Prague in 1935 and 1936, and then back in Paris. She travelled to the Soviet Union under the name of Anni Grob, her Russian visa endorsed by Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht. From 1948 to 1953, she was the director of the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the SED. She was superseded by Peter Florin, and became one of his deputies. In this role, she was a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the SED Politburo under the direction of Ulbricht and then Heinrich Rau. In this role she was a member of the Central Committee Commission for travelling abroad, led by Secretary of State William Zaisser that approved any travel abroad by SED officials. From 1959 until her retirement in 1970, she worked in the press department of the East German Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She died in Dresden in unified Federal Germany on the 4th of January 1999.